Many hand grips and most golf hand grips are currently being made by a molding process and any design or marking desired on the outside of the grip must be designed into the mold so that the marking is in the form of a depression or groove in the resultant molded product outer surface into which a suitable paint is then characteristically applied with any excess being removed such as by wiping, buffing or sanding.
Such process however, would be extremely costly and limited in versatility in cases where individualized marking is desired since special molds would have to be made to satisfy individual customer request.
Surprisingly, no one prior to the present invention had thought to utilize laser technology for marking specialized information on already molded hand grips so that either or both the manufacturer and distributor could provide such specialized marking in response to individual customer request.
Although laser marking devices have been available in the market place for many years, they have not heretofor been employed to mark information on already molded hand grips.
Informative descriptions of commercially available laser devices can be found for example in "Proceedings of the Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers" (SPIE) in Volume 86, pp. 23-29, 1976, in an article by M. J. Weiner entitled "PRODUCT MARKING WITH NA: YAG and C0.sub.2 LASERS" and in Volume 247, pp. 18-23, 1980 in an article by Ronald L. Hansen entitled "EODYMIUM YTTRIUM ALUMINUM GARNET (Nd: YAG) LASER MARKING SYSTEMS".
Although the above described SPIE articles are replete with information concerning electronic circuitry associated with the respective devices and their ability to mark by vaporizing adjacently positioned dots or continuous grooves or tunnels in metal, plastic and rubber materials, no one heretofor had thought to apply such laser technology to mark already molded hand grips with personalized information such as insignia, brand names, logomarks, signatures and the like which would otherwise be extremely impracticable where such had to be accomplished by engraving the molds.
An example of a laser cutting device for tape controled cutting is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,469,930 the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. An example where a laser device is used to engrave printing copper plate is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,516,496, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. An example of laser cutting tire treads in blank prototype blocks is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,564,737, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference.
None of the above patents however, singularly or in any combination with the above described SPIE articles disclose or suggest the marking method of the present invention.